On Thu, May 6, 2010 at 1:03 PM, Douglas Koller <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> ----- "Jim Henry" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Doesn't Esperanto have participles, like "curving", "curved", "will be curved"? So couldn't we use a (theoretical, since I'm not going to revisit Esperanto grammar just to make a point) form like:
>
> ?kurbata - (having been) curved
>
> Rekta vojo estas pli mallonga, ol kurbato.
>
> A straight path is shorter than a curved (one). ?
Rather "kurbito", a thing-that's-been-curved. "kurbato" would suggest
that someone is actively making the path curvier still even as we
speak.
In theory you could say that, but it feels unnatural -- unless maybe
in some fairly contrived context, like where the shape of paths is not
constant and one of the ones we're talking about was straight but
recently got curved by some rearrangement of the landscape -- and even
in that case one would more probably say
La rekta vojo estas pli mallonga ol la kurbita.
I don't say it is unnatural per se for a language to work like that,
or that in some timelines fairly near our own the Esperanto that grew
from the seed of 1887 wouldn't work like that, but our timeline's
Esperanto does not, IME.
> By not nominalizing the second element, I would think you would end up with sentences like: *"Your daughter is younger than my."
>
> (oh, that's just ellipsis, since we know what the co-referent is?!)
You do, in fact: "Your daughter is younger than mine" would be
translated "Via filino estas pli juna ol mia", the same form "mia"
being used to translate English "my" and "mine". In other contexts
you would have to say "la mia(j)(n)", if the omitted head noun wasn't
just mentioned earlier in the same sentence:
Johano: "Ĉu vi vidis mian plumon?"
(Have you seen my pen?)
Tomaso: "Ne, sed vi povas prunti la mian."
(No, but you can borrow mine.)
--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/